Suicide Week
by Yarrie - Water Master
Summary: Izaya calls himself immortal but nobody believes him. So what does he do? Accidentally prove it, of course! Mildly hinted Shizaya and even more mildly hinted Mikaya. Serious, introspective crack, if such a thing exists.


I have fallen into temptation. I have written for my new obsession. Daaaaaaaah.

Mild hints of Shizaya and Mizaya. More of the former than the latter.

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Suicide Week

* * *

Orihara Izaya loves science. He loves science because humans created science - a clear package of emotion and logic tightly bound up in encyclopedias and textbooks - and of course, he loves humans. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to love. Humans would be essentially ugly creatures if not for their creations, and some of their most beautiful creations are their words.

Orihara Izaya loves words, too. Loves the way they drip off his tongue like a lover's caress, lost on the wind until they build up in the background and cause hurricanes. He loves it, the rush of creation. Even the word 'creation' is beautiful, like some gift bestowed upon the gray masses from the benevolent hand of God. And make no mistake, Orihara Izaya believes in God, in his own twisted way.

He does, but...

Ah, ah, ah, but who _is_ God? In this town, it might as well be Izaya himself.

It's the only time he ever thinks about religion seriously.

Once, he wrote "I am..." on a wall, but he decided not to finish the sentence, because there were better days to say things like that. Deathdays, for example. Immortality is reserved for the dead and dying and possibly reborn. Even so, Izaya doesn't really believe in reincarnation. It's too boring. If there is a _second life_, there are _second chances_. No risk involved whatsoever, because you can always restart. He hates the very sound of it - the sense of amnesiatic immortality.

Hates, hates, hates.

Reincarnation is boring. In fact, there aren't many interesting theories about the afterlife. None that would interest Izaya, anyway.

So, even when it comes to his own death, Izaya doesn't really care how he leaves the world, as long as there's something left in his place to torment people for ever and ever. What happens to a God after he dies? Who knows, who cares?

He drinks poison on Monday morning.

Shinra takes him to the emergency room with a sympathetic smile and a lot of long words. His throat burns the same way it does after a good bout of maniacal laughter. Shinra gives detailed instructions about pills to take - something about anthrax - and finally sends him on his merry way. The person who poisoned him works in the same office, but he has to give Namie credit where it's due. Not very many people could have slipped poison into his coffee. Not very many people know that he even drinks coffee. When Izaya goes back to his desk in the late afternoon, he doesn't hide the pills that are supposed to heal him. When she sees him, sees the medicine, the paleness of her cheeks tell him the entire story. Izaya doesn't even have to force her to confess. Borrrring. Next?

He falls off a building on Tuesday morning.

Still dizzy and nauseous from the poison yesterday, his balance is too shaky to plant him firmly on the fence. It shifts under him, and he loses footing at the very last minute. Celty is there, originally just to talk to him about some assignment or another that is supposed to happen later in the week, but he is cheerfully grateful for her presence, especially when the black smoke coils around his foot and pulls him back up. Izaya laughs the entire way and shakes off her pointed admonitions that he _has not taken the medicine_.

He shoots himself on Wednesday morning.

It's a simple gamble for life, really. When surrounded by gangsters, even Izaya doesn't like to taunt them too much if there's no convenient Shizu-chan around to use as a shield. He runs and catapults himself over a wall, then slices the arm off the gang member hanging on the other side. There's a gun attached to the arm, which he promptly brings out and aims at his own stomach. Sometimes, it's easiest to fake death if you want to escape it, especially if you want to escape it quickly. He has better things to do today. They leave his body alone.

He hangs himself on Thursday morning.

Not on purpose, of course - Izaya doesn't particularly like the feeling of asphyxiation, but when he tries to roll off the bed that's tied him down, a few long stretches of fabric bite into his neck and he can't breathe for a few frantic seconds. More than a few. Nearly five minutes later, the pressure relaxes and there's the smell of a burning cigarette. Perfectly on cue, Izaya beams up at the dark sunglasses of his absolute favorite human and says, "Hello, Shizu-chan~" Just as he expects, a solid fist rams straight into his cheek and throws him out of the house. Izaya still doesn't know how exactly he got there, but he suspects the Otaku crew had a role in it.

He starves on Friday morning.

Well, he would have, if it weren't for the exasperated intervention of Mikado-kun, who sighs and lets him in and cooks him something bland and neutral. It's not very appetizing, nor is it very exotic, but Izaya quietly relishes it. In many ways, Mikado has learned that the best way to protect yourself is to stay perfectly, securely invisible. He sings that the younger teenager is his savior and ends up skipping away cheerfully after the meal - the first he's had since Monday morning. Mikado, who is not the least bit surprised, waves and says_, _"See you later."

He chokes on Saturday morning.

Simon is happy to serve him food, yes, even in the earliest hours of dawn, but Izaya himself is not very happy when he finds himself halfway asleep with food in his mouth, going down the wrong tube. Simon claps his back eagerly, much too eagerly, until there are dark bruises forming on the pale skin of his back. It doesn't help that in the middle of recuperation, Ikebukuro's guard dog catches his scent and tears down the street with a suitably sized vending machine in his hand. Izaya is still coughing up grains of rice all the way to Shinjuku.

He gets hit by a car on Sunday morning.

It's a common enough occurrence on the streets that no one pays attention except for the select few that recognize who he is. Orihara Izaya doesn't get hit by cars, it's a fact of life. And yet...when the eighteen wheeler slams hims, he doesn't feel the least bit surprised. Maybe he's even pleased. There's something about the immensity of a truck that makes the pain worth it. Something like pride that Orihara Izaya, twenty-three year old human extraordinaire, is immune to technology itself. Even so, his abdomen cries out in pain for the rest of the day.

He drinks poison on Monday morning.

Shinra has commissioned the skills of both Simon _and_ Shizuo (though how the bartender managed to get mixed up in the supposed rescue mission is completely beyond Izaya's comprehension, not that it's a bad thing) to hold him down for Operation Izaya's Antidote. It tastes awful, like all medicine does, but Izaya has no choice. Not with Celty looming in the background and Shizu-chan nearly breaking his left wrist. Suicidal he may be, stupid he is not.

When it's over, he sobs loudly that "Shinra has no bedside manner" and "Shizu-chan is cruel" and all the manner of strange exclamations that someone records on tape and posts on the internet.

That someone may or may not be Izaya himself.

Funny how life happens.

_"I am an immortal human, but a human nonetheless."_


End file.
